Chance

Christian Boltanski, Chance: French Pavillion, Venice Biennale 2011

“The work presented at Venice is optimistic in its reflection on chance and destiny; the chance of birth against the chance of death. Is everything pre-determined? Who controls destiny? Has our path already been decided? Is God present or absent? At the entrance to the pavilion, the visitor is invited to sit on one of the wooden chairs. A voice whispers to him. Each chair “speaks” in a different language uttering the words “Is this the last time?” Is this a message of hope? Or a troubling announcement?… The interior of the pavilion is criss-crossed by a moving walkway, that travels at great speed and upon which hundreds of photos of childrenʼs faces have been printed. The walkway stops randomly and one of the childrenʼs faces is lit up and an alarm sounds. Chance has picked out one child. The process begins all over again, until the walkway stops again and the alarm signals Chanceʼs next choice.” (Press Release)

Monument in Nuremberg, Germany

“O my soul, do not aspire to immportal life, but

exhaust the limits of the possible”

Pindar, Pythian iii

Messkirch, Germany

The sunset in Vouliagmeni is one of the most beautiful in the world. It is in harmony with Man.

You can reach all areas, you can swim, you can walk, even the rocks are hospitable.

Sunset in Vouliagmeni, Attica, Greece

Even in Wintertime there are brave souls who swim with their bodies.

When I look at them I always think of Schubert’s Winterreise, set on 24 poems of Wilhelm Mueller. Schubert called it “a cycle of terrifying songs”. Here are two of them, sung by Mathias Goerne, accompanied by Alfred Brendel.

Täuschung – Deception

A light on the dark and icy road at night, might be a warm place to stay, or the deception of a beautiful face.

Der Wegweiser  – The Signpost

Straying restlessly away from the roads, he still seeks rest. There is always a signpost in front of him, pointing to the road from which no wanderer returns. Death?

Sunrise in Kaletzi, near Marathon, Greece

The landscape is barren. Three years ago multiple fires scorched the earth and destroyed beautiful pine forests all around.

But the sun every time it rises, makes the barren landscape look beautiful.

Richard Strauss was one of the greatest composers. Morgen! (“Tomorrow!”) is the last in a set of four songs composed in 1894, set in a poem of John Henry Mackay.

It is sung by Dame Janet Baker.

Tomorrow!

Tomorrow again will shine the sun
And on my sunlit path of earth
Unite us again, as it has done,
And give our bliss another birth…
The spacious beach under wave-blue skies
We’ll reach by descending soft and slow,
And mutely gaze in each other’s eyes,
As over us rapture’s great hush will flow.

Martin Heidegger's Feldweg in Messkirch, Germany

In 1948, one year before his death on 1949, Richard Strauss composed “Fier Letzte Lieder”, his “Last Four Songs” for soprano and orchestra.

At Sunset is sung by Gundula Janowitz. Berliner Philharmoniker is conducted by Herbert von Karajan.

Im Abendrot – At Sunset

We have gone through sorrow and joy
hand in hand;
Now we can rest from our wandering
above the quiet land.

Around us, the valleys bow;
the air is growing darker.
Just two skylarks soar upwards
dreamily into the fragrant air.

Come close to me, and let them flutter.
Soon it will be time for sleep.
Let us not lose our way
in this solitude.

O vast, tranquil peace,
so deep at sunset!
How weary we are of wandering—
Is this perhaps death?

Sunset in Vouliagmeni, Attica, Greece

“Although The Myth of Sisyphus poses mortal problems, it sums up for me as a lucid invitation to live and to create in the very midst of the desert.”

Albert Camus, in the Preface to his book, March 1955.

In my beginning is my end (T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets, East Coker, I)

5th century BC

Acropolis, Athens, Greece

6th century AD

Basilica di San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy

16th century

Matthias Gruenewald, Die Stuppacher Mdonna
Tiziano: Salome con la testa di S. Giovanni Battista

16th – 17th century

Caravaggio, San Giovanni Battista

18th century

San Francisco Church, Salvador, Bahia, Brasil
Inside the Church of San Francisco in Salvador

19th century

Cezanne, Large Pine and Red Earth
Degas, The Millinery Shop

20th century and beyond

Nolde, Hermit on Tree
Freud's Couch, The Freud Museum, London, England
Helmut Newton
Maria Adair, Instalacao Ambiental
Elaine Roberts, Lotus Flower
Venice - my photo
Anselm Kiefer, Salt of the Earth
Boy - my photo
Thomas Schutte, Efficiency Men
Naoussa, Paros, Greece - my photo
Lefkes, Paros, Greece - my photo
Marpissa, Paros, Greece - my photo
The Earth of Marathon, Attica, Greece - my photo
T.S. Eliot - Four Quartets, East Coker, III

 

Happy New Year!!!

P.S. This came as a result of rediscovering X’s letter with the extensive quotation from Eliot’s poem “Four Quartets”. The hand written page is hers.

Bacchus Sculptures – Three examples of Greek Art

Great Art is a mix of two basic components. The first is the accumulation of the past. The second is the break away from the past. In an earlier post, I presented Michelangelo’s Bacchus in Florence’s Bargello. Today I would like to view some earlier sculptures depicting Dionysus or Bacchus, the God of Wine. This will serve to highlight the first component of Great Art, the tradition that Michelangelo inherited, and will make it easier to appreciate his creation.

Dionysus, Bronze, Greece 460 BC. Musee du Louvre, Paris

I start with a Greek statuette of Dionysus as a young man, of the 5th century BC. I quote from the Louvre site:

“Created c.460 BCE, this statuette bears witness to the aesthetic innovations introduced by the generation of sculptors who worked in the Severe style, after the Archaic period and before the Classical period. The contours are more flowing and the distribution of weight is new. The tilted pelvis and the accompanying movement of the muscles add life to the figure, although the line of the shoulders remains horizontal: the contrapposto arrangement of the figure developed by Polyclitus of Argos toward the mid-fifth century BCE had not yet been adopted at this point. The youth is captured in a walking position, with his weight on his left leg and the right leg bent, the heel of the right foot probably raised from the ground in the manner of works by Polyclitus of a few years later. The weight of the body is thus shifted on to one leg alone. The treatment of the skillfully proportioned musculature also anticipates the athletic figures of Polyclitus. The hair, caught up in a short style, reflects the style common at the time. The grave facial expression, finally, contrasts with the open smiles of the Archaic kouroi.”

Praxiteles: Hermes and the infant Dionysus, 4th century BC

I continue with Praxiteles’ infant Dionysus held by Hermes, one of the most beautiful sculptures of Ancient Greece, now in the Archaelogical Museum of Olympia in Greece. I quote from the Museum of Art and Archaeology of the University of Missouri:

“When Zeus, king of the gods, revealed himself to his mortal lover Semele, she was at once incinerated by his divine radiance. Zeus, however, was able to rescue their unborn child by sewing him within his own thigh. Following the birth of the child, Zeus ordered Hermes, his messenger, to hide the newborn from his jealous wife Hera, who sought to destroy any remnants of the affair, including the newborn. Hermes swiftly took the baby to remote mountains for hiding, where nymphs raised the child. Under their care, the infant Dionysos grew to maturity and became the god of wine, revelry, and theater. Hermes and the Infant Dionysos depicts the messenger before he delivered the infant to the mountain nymphs.

German excavators discovered the statue in 1877 in the Temple of Hera at Olympia. Pausanias, a second century A.D. historian, describes his tour of this temple in which he saw such a statue said to be by Praxiteles.

Praxiteles achieved a naturalism and intimacy not seen before in sculpture. His style moved away from the hard, scientific vision of the earlier Classical Period. Unbalanced poses, sensuous forms, playful subjects, and use of emotion contrast with the previous period’s idealized and stoic works. The innovations evident in Hermes and the Infant Dionysos define the Late Classical Period and signify changes fully realized in the Hellenistic Period.”

Borghese Vase, detail, Musee du Louvre, Paris

To conclude this short detour, I would like to view the Borghese Vase, now in the Louvre. The Vase was made in Athens in the 1st century BC, of Pentelikon marble. Quoting from the Louvre site: “These large vases, much appreciated by the Romans as decoration for their gardens, were mass-produced in workshops in Athens and then exported to Italy in large quantities. Athenian marble workers specialized in making these pieces. The rapid Hellenisation of the Roman ruling class that resulted from the conquests stimulated the development of backward-looking styles. Since pillaging by Roman generals was not sufficient to meet the growing demand for Greek works, artists drew on the repertoires of ealier periods of Greek art. The relief decoration represents a Bacchic procession. Satyrs and maenads dance to music, accompanying Dionysus and Ariadne, who preside over the revels. The models for the decoration are drawn from Hellenistic art of the mid-second century BC.”

Real Greece – Part IV: Aegean Sculpture – A Church in the village of Marpissa, Paros, Greece

I was for a few days on the island of Paros, Greece, where one night I saw under the weak lunar light the Aegean Sculpture I present today. The white church looked like something much more than a religious building, and I pronounced it “a sculpture”. Next morning I went to the village in order to photograph the “sculpture”. It was there, bathed in the morning sunlight, in the middle of the small community that was still resting. This emotional experience led me to present the church as sculpture and sculpture as a working work of art, in the sense originally discussed by Martin Heidegger.

I find particularly interesting the notion of a “working” work of art, in the sense that it is a work that participates and in a way effects and reflects real life. I will therefore quote extensively from Heidegger’s work but also from scholars who have tried to interpret Heidegger after his “turn” to aesthetics and art.

I will conclude with some thoughts on the significance of the Aegean Sculpture in the context of the ever developing Greek drama, a combination of financial and cultural bankruptcy.

{In his article, “The Origin of the Work of Art” Heidegger explains the essence of art in terms of the concepts of being and truth. He argues that art is not only a way of expressing the element of truth in a culture, but the means of creating it and providing a springboard from which “that which is” can be revealed. Works of art are not merely representations of the way things are, but actually produce a community’s shared understanding. Each time a new artwork is added to any culture, the meaning of what it is to exist is inherently changed.}

(Source: Wikipedia)

{Heidegger’s basic insight is that the work of art not only manifests the style of the culture; it articulates it. For everyday practices to give us a shared world, and so give meaning to our lives, they must be focused and held up to the practitioners. Works of art, when performing this function, are not merely representations of a pre-existing state of affairs, but actually produce a shared understanding.}

(Source: Hubert L. Dreyfus, Heidegger on Art)

Heidegger articulates his thoughts by discussing an ancient Greek Temple:

{It is the temple work that first fits together and at the same time gathers around itself the unity of those paths and relations in which birth and death, disaster and blessing, victory and disgrace, endurance and decline acquire the shape of destiny for human being….(The temple thus) gave things their look and men their outlook on themselves.}

(Source: Martin Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art)

{Heidegger is considering art in terms of its cultural founding significance, and cultural founding art work acts as a paradigm for the event of truth’s happening. The happening of truth is described as the projection of truth, and all art is defined by Heidegger as Dichtung, or poetry.  However, this does not restrict the definition of Dichtung to include only the linguistic expression of “poetry.” Rather, he envisages Dichtung as referencing all creative, projective  events of truth’s happening. Therefore, Dichtung occurs in many forms of art: painting, sculpture,  architecture, music, and poetry. Due to art’s unique nature, it opens the space of disclosure in  such a way that it “breaks open an open place, in whose openness everything is other than  usual.”34 Heidegger stresses the potential of great art to ecstatically displace Dasein from the realm of its everyday, ordinary ways of existing by transforming “anew” its accustomed ties to the world and Earth.}

(Source: James Magrini, The Work of Art and Truth of Being as “Historical”: Reading Being and Time, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” and the “Turn” (Kehre) in Heidegger’s Philosophy of the 1930s)

The work of art is not something that works out its truth merely by laying it bare and plain for all to see. On the contrary, great works of  art outshine others in their unfathomableness, (i.e. their depth). That is, anything which lends itself to conveniently summed up—described and explained away—is not thus preserved in its being let ‘stand-initself’, but rather leveled off and disabled in its capacity for bringing about wonder and estrangement; it is dragged down in connoisseurship to the realm of commonality (i.e. the unextraordinary) and commodity (i.e. the ‘art business’). It is masticated so as to be served up as fodder for idle talk.

(Source: Shawn Moi, Perplexity and Passion in Heidegger)

In the Heideggerian framework of viewing Art, the Ancient Greek Temple is “non-working Art”, in the sense that the work of art no longer has and maintains a dynamic interplay with the surrounding community. the reasonable question that emerges having seen the Aegean sculpture, is:

Is the Aegean sculpture working art, in the sense that it performs the three essential functions? (see Dreyfus):

  • Manifesting a World
  • Articulating a culture’s understanding of Being
  • Reconfiguring a culture’s understanding of Being

I believe it is, and as long as it remains, I also believe that there is hope in the contemporary drama of Greece.

The hope is that Greeks will eventually accept to be themselves (ourselves) and stop trying to become a pathetic immitation of others. There is no survival without identity, and the Aegean Sculpture is part of the Greek’s multifaceted  identity. The acceptance of identity will also start the process of maintaining it and embellishing it, and this is where the Aegean Sculpture also comes in, with its stunning simplicity and harmony of being an integral part of the space around it.

The white structure engages the blue sky and the sea of the Aegean in an eternal embrace.

Its whiteness pays tribute to the famous marble of Paros, but beats it at the same time, as its humble and simple material reminds us that we can do wonderful things, and thus be wonderful ourselves with very “cheap” materials. The Aegean Sculpture could never be made of gold, or covered with precious stones. It would not be itself.

Intoxicating pleasures, deformities and disproportions: The Female in decorative arts and music

Introduction

“An artist is an artist only because of his exquisite sense of beauty, a sense which shows him intoxicating pleasures, but which at the same time implies and contains an equally exquisite sense of all deformities and all disproportion.” C.Baudelaire ( I thank “Paintisnotdead” for the quote)

Today I publish more of my favourite depictions of the female in sculptures, paintings and photos, accompanied by a song or an aria. Beaudelaire’s saying epitomizes what is the sense of beauty I am looking for. I am looking for all deformities and disproportions at the same time that I am captivated by the formal elements of beauty.

These are fragments, in the sense that Female Characters and Images and Music, all come together without a coherent Totality. Fragments, moments in times gone, characters in the course of history, real or imaginative.

Fragmenta

1. {Alma Mahler} 

The golden hair of Venus, her eyes contemplating the fate of whoever meets her gaze. She is confident, she is on top of the world, she is unbeatable in the game of Love. Tackling her is suicidal, but this type of death, under her gaze is a sweet death.

Liebst du um Schönheit,

O nicht mich liebe!

Liebe die Sonne,

Sie trägt ein gold’nes Haar!

If you love for beauty,

Oh, do not love me!

Love the sun,

She has golden hair!

(Detail from Botticelli’s “The birth of Venus, Ufizzi in Florence.)

2.(Mimi, La Boheme}

Golden brown hair, contemplation on the mirror, the bluish landscape offering a retreat from the heat of the internal scene. The confidence of Venus is gone. The young woman tries to see into her future. What does the mirror hold for her?

O soave fanciulla, o dolce viso
di mite circonfuso alba lunar,
in te ravviso il sogno
ch’io vorrei sempre sognar!

Oh! sweet little lady! Oh sweetest vision,
with moonlight bathing your pretty face!
The dream that I see in you
is the dream I’ll always dream!

(Young Woman in her Toilet, by Giovanni Bellini (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum)).

Gerhard Richter, Betty 1988

3. Everybody is talking at her, but Betty is looking away.

Everybody’s talking at me.
I don’t hear a word they’re saying,
Only the echoes of my mind.
People stopping staring,
I can’t see their faces,
Only the shadows of their eyes.

I’m going where the sun keeps shining
Thru’ the pouring rain,
Going where the weather suits my clothes,
Backing off of the North East wind,
Sailing on summer breeze
And skipping over the ocean like a stone.

I’m going where the sun keeps shining
Thru’ the pouring rain,
Going where the weather suits my clothes,
Backing off of the North East wind,
Sailing on summer breeze
And skipping over the ocean like a stone

(Almost five centuries later, Gerhard Richter’s daughter, Betty, poses unusually in this 1988 portrait. I have published this portrait for the first time in the blog in my 2010 post honoring women.)

David Schoerner, Martynka

4. Run Away, Turn Away

You leave in the morning
With everything you own
In a little black case
Alone on a platform
The wind and the rain
On a sad and lonely face

Mother will never understand
Why you had to leave
But the answers you seek
Will never be found at home
The love that you need
Will never be found at home

Run away, turn away, run away, turn away, run away.
Run away, turn away, run away, turn away, run away.

Pushed around and kicked around
Always a lonely boy
You were the one
That they’d talk about around town
As they put you down

And as hard as they would try
They’d hurt to make you cry
But you never cried to them
Just to your soul
No you never cried to them
Just to your soul

Run away, turn away, run away, turn away, run away.
Run away, turn away, run away, turn away, run away.

Cry , boy, cry…

You leave in the morning
With everything you own
In a little black case
Alone on a platform
The wind and the rain
On a sad and lonely face

Run away, turn away, run away, turn away, run away.
Run away, turn away, run away, turn away, run away.

(Taking the lead from Richter’s unusual position for a portrait, David Schoerner, an American photographer, took this photo “Martynka (after Gerhard Richter’s Betty)”, honoring the oblique unusual pose of Richter’s Betty. I found this Martynka thanks to “Eloge de l’ Art par Alain Truong“).)

5. {Cio – Cio San (Madama Butterfly)}

Un bel dì, vedremo
levarsi un fil di fumo
sull’estremo confin del mare.
E poi la nave appare.
Poi la nave bianca
entra nel porto,
romba il suo saluto.
One good day, we will see
Arising a strand of smoke
Over the far horizon on the sea
And then the ship appears
And then the ship is white
It enters into the port, it rumbles its salute.

Cio-cio San asks the mirror the eternal question of beauty. This question is at the same time eternal and astonishingly temporal. She wants to know whether she is beautiful now, the very moment she is looking at the mirror. Tomorrow is too far away. “Am  I beautiful now?”

(The Japanese Master Hokusai painted a woman in front of her mirror. I like the somber background and the restrained tone of the colors.)

Alison Brady: Untitled 2006

6. Alice? Who the fuck is Alice

Brown hair covering the face, painted body inviting. Living painting, the canvas is now the human flesh.

Sally called when she got the word,
She said: “I suppose you’ve heard –
About Alice”.
Well I rushed to the window,
And I looked outside,
But I could hardly believe my eyes –
As a big limousine rolled slowly
Into Alice’s drive…

Oh, I don’t know why she’s leaving,
Or where she’s gonna go,
I guess she’s got her reasons,
But I just don’t want to know,
‘Cos for twenty-four years
I’ve been living next door to Alice.
Alice, who the fuck is Alice

Twenty-four years just waiting for a chance,
To tell her how I’m feeling, maybe get a second glance,
Now I’ve got to get used to not living next door to Alice…
Alice, who the fuck is Alice

Grew up together,
Two kids in the park,
Carved our initials,
Deep in the bark,
Me and Alice.
Now she walks through the door,
With her head held high,
Just for a moment, I caught her eye,
As a big limousine pulled slowly
Out of Alice’s drive.

Oh, I don’t know why she’s leaving,
Or where she’s gonna go,
I guess she’s got her reasons,
But I just don’t want to know,
‘Cos for twenty-four years
I’ve been living next door to Alice.
Alice, who the fuck is Alice

Twenty-four years just waiting for a chance,
To tell her how I’m feeling, maybe get a second glance,
Now I gotta get used to not living next door to Alice…
Alice, who the fuck is Alice

Sally called back, asked how I felt,
She said: “I know how to help –
Get over Alice”.
She said: “Now Alice is gone,
But I’m still here,
You know I’ve been waiting
For twenty-four years…”
And the big limousine disappeared…

I don’t know why she’s leaving,
Or where she’s gonna go,
I guess she’s got her reasons,
But I just don’t want to know,
‘Cos for twenty-four years
I’ve been living next door to Alice.
Alice, who the fuck is Alice

Twenty-four years just waiting for a chance,
To tell her how I feel, and maybe get a second glance,
But I’ll never get used to not living next door to Alice…
Alice, who the fuck is Alice

Now I’ll never get used to not living next door to Alice…

(The portrait is now mixed with the nude body. Coming to think of it, the face, the object or subject of the portrait, is always naked. But we do not say “this is a naked face”, because the face – even when made up – is always naked. Therefore we do not say it as it would be a tautology. In the rather elaborate photo taken by Alison Brady, the face is not only naked, but hidden. In Schoerner’s Martynka the face is not shown, but is not hidden. In Brady’s untitled woman the face is hidden on purpose, as if what matters most is the naked breasts that have been elaborately covered by a paint pattern. Therefore we have a juxtraposition not only of the portrait with the naked body, but of the photo with a painting, as the depicted body is painted.)

Roy Lichtenstein: Crying Girl

7. Rigoletto’s daughter Gilda

Cry, cry girl!!!

Piangi, piangi faciulla!

(Roy Lichtenstein’s crying girl brings pop art to the post. The face in this portrait is not naked, as it is dressed by tears.)

RB Kitaj: Sandra Fisher

8.  Love

I wanna be loved by you
just you and nobody else but you
I wanna be loved by you – alone.
Boo boo bee doo

I wanna be kissed by you
just you and nobody alse but you
I wanna be kissed by you – alone.
Boo boo bee doo

I couldn’t aspire
to anything higher
and to feel the desire
to make you my own.
Badum badum bee doodily dum ! Boo !

(No female portrait collection would be complete without RB Kitaj’s portrait of his beloved Sandra Fisher.)

RB Kitaj: Marynka smoking

9. Marynka, aka Lulu

You keep saying you’ve got something for me.
something you call love, but confess.
You’ve been messin’ where you shouldn’t have been a messin’
and now someone else is gettin’ all your best.

These boots are made for walking, and that’s just what they’ll do
one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.

You keep lying, when you oughta be truthin’
and you keep losin’ when you oughta not bet.
You keep samin’ when you oughta be changin’.
Now what’s right is right, but you ain’t been right yet.

These boots are made for walking, and that’s just what they’ll do
one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.

You keep playin’ where you shouldn’t be playin
and you keep thinkin’ that you´ll never get burnt.
Ha!
I just found me a brand new box of matches yeah
and what he know you ain’t HAD time to learn.

These boots are made for walking, and that’s just what they’ll do
one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.

Are you ready boots? Start walkin’!

RB Kitaj: Marynka on her stomach

10. Lay lady lay

Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Whatever colors you have in your mind
I’ll show them to you and you’ll see them shine

Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Stay, lady, stay, stay with your man awhile
Until the break of day, let me see you make him smile
His clothes are dirty but his hands are clean
And you’re the best thing that he’s ever seen

Stay, lady, stay, stay with your man awhile
Why wait any longer for the world to begin
You can have your cake and eat it too
Why wait any longer for the one you love
When he’s standing in front of you

Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
Stay, lady, stay, stay while the night is still ahead
I long to see you in the morning light
I long to reach for you in the night
Stay, lady, stay, stay while the night is still ahead

(Kitaj also painted Marynka lying on her stomach.)

Aneta Bartos, untitled

11. Stairway to Heaven

There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold
And she’s buying the stairway to heaven.
When she gets there she knows, if the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for.
Ooh, ooh, and she’s buying the stairway to heaven.

There’s a sign on the wall but she wants to be sure
‘Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings.
In a tree by the brook, there’s a songbird who sings,
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven.
Ooh, it makes me wonder,
Ooh, it makes me wonder.

There’s a feeling I get when I look to the west,
And my spirit is crying for leaving.
In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees,
And the voices of those who stand looking.
Ooh, it makes me wonder,
Ooh, it really makes me wonder.

And it’s whispered that soon if we all call the tune
Then the piper will lead us to reason.
And a new day will dawn for those who stand long
And the forests will echo with laughter.

If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now,
It’s just a spring clean for the May queen.
Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
There’s still time to change the road you’re on.
And it makes me wonder.

Your head is humming and it won’t go, in case you don’t know,
The piper’s calling you to join him,
Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow, and did you know
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind.

And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul.
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold.
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last.
When all are one and one is all
To be a rock and not to roll.

And she’s buying the stairway to heaven.

(Another photo by Bartos)

Gerhard Richter: Ema - Nude on a staircase

12. Ema

And I would do anything for love,
I’d run right into hell and back.
I would do anything for love,
I’ll never lie to you and that’s a fact.

But I’ll never forget the way you feel right now, oh no, no way.
And I would do anything for love,
Oh I would do anything for love,
I would do anything for love,
But I won’t do that,
No I won’t do that.

And some days it don’t come easy,
And some days it don’t come hard,
Some days it don’t come at all, and these are the days that never end.

And some nights you’re breathing fire.
And some nights you’re carved in ice.
Some nights you’re like nothing I’ve ever seen before or will again.

And maybe I’m crazy.
Oh it’s crazy and it’s true.
I know you can save me, no one else can save me now but you.

As long as the planets are turning.
As long as the stars are burning.
As long as your dreams are coming true, you’d better believe it!

That I would do anything for love,
And I’ll be there till the final act.
And I would do anything for love,
And I’ll take the vow and seal a pact.

But I’ll never forgive myself if we don’t go all the way, tonight.

And I would do anything for love,
But I won’t do that.
No, I won’t do that!

I would do anything for love,
Anything you’ve been dreaming of,
But I just won’t do that.
[x2]

[Solo]
And some days I pray for silence,
And some days I pray for soul,
Some days I just pray to the god of sex and drums and rock ‘n’ roll!

And maybe I’m lonely,
That’s all I’m qualified to be.
There’s just one and only, one and only promise I can keep.

As long as the wheels are turning.
As long as the fires are burning.
As long as your prayers are coming true, you’d better believe it!

That I would do anything for love,
And you know it’s true and that’s a fact.
I would do anything for love,
And there’ll never be no turning back.

But I’ll never do it better than I do it with you, so long, so long.
And I would do anything for love,
Oh, I would do anything for love,
I would do anything for love,
But I won’t do that.
No, no, no, I won’t do…..

I would do anything for love.
Anything you’ve been dreaming of.
But I just won’t do that!
[x3]

But I’ll never stop dreaming of you,
Every night of my life.
No way.

And I would do anything for love.
But I won’t do that.
No I won’t do that.

[Girl]
Will you raise me up, will you help me down?
Will you get me right out of this God forsaken town?
Will you make it all a little less cold?

[Boy]
I can do that. Oh I can do that.

[Girl]
Will you cater to every fantasy I’ve got?
Will you hose me down with holy water, if I get too hot? Hot!
Will you take me places I’ve never known?

[Boy]
Now I can do that! Oh oh now, I can do that!

[Girl]
After awhile you’ll forget everything.
It was a brief interlude
And a midsummer night’s fling,
And you’ll see that it’s time to move on.

[Boy]
I won’t do that. I won’t do that.

[Girl}
I know the territory, I’ve been around,
It’ll all turn to dust and will all fall down,
Sooner or later, you’ll be screwing around.

[Boy]
I won’t do that. No, I won’t do that.

Anything for love,
Oh, I would do anything for love,
I would do anything for love,
But I won’t do that.
No, I won’t do that.

(Gerhard Richter’s painting )

Sarah Lucas: Nuds, 2010

13. Sweet Jane

Standing on the corner,
Suitcase in my hand
Jack is in his corset, and Jane is her vest,
And me I’m in a rock’n’roll band Hah!
Ridin’ in a Stutz Bear Cat, Jim
You know, those were different times!
Oh, all the poets they studied rules of verse
And those ladies, they rolled their eyes

Sweet Jane! Whoa! Sweet Jane, oh-oh-a! Sweet Jane!

I’ll tell you something
Jack, he is a banker
And Jane, she is a clerk
Both of them save their monies, ha
And when, when they come home from work
Oh, Sittin’ down by the fire, oh!
The radio does play
The classical music there, Jim
“The March of the Wooden Soldiers”
All you protest kids
You can hear Jack say, get ready, ah

Sweet Jane! Come on baby! Sweet Jane! Oh-oh-a! Sweet Jane!

Some people, they like to go out dancing
And other peoples, they have to work, Just watch me now!
And there’s even some evil mothers
Well they’re gonna tell you that everything is just dirt
Y’know that, women, never really faint
And that villains always blink their eyes, woo!
And that, y’know, children are the only ones who blush!
And that, life is just to die!
And, everyone who ever had a heart
They wouldn’t turn around and break it
And anyone who ever played a part
Oh wouldn’t turn around and hate it!

Sweet Jane! Whoa-oh-oh! Sweet Jane! Sweet Jane!

Heavenly wine and roses
Seems to whisper to her when he smiles
Heavenly wine and roses
Seems to whisper to her when she smiles
La lala lala la, la lala lala la
Sweet Jane
Sweet Jane
Sweet Jane

(The transfiguration of food objects into body parts was a post that brought Sarah Lucas to my blog. Her NUDS is a series of sculptures that I find intriguing. I quote from the “Auckland’s Art Festival 2011” relevant web page:)

Sarah Lucas: Nuds, 2010

(Lucas’s new sculptural series, NUDS, consists of nylon tights stuffed with fluff and fashioned into ambiguous biomorphic forms. The coinage NUDS itself implies knots, nodes, or nudes and is evidence of Lucas’s use of puns, slang and language as elements of her sculpture.  The works brim with allusions, inviting different interpretations from the tender to the auto-erotic. Leaning towards primitivism and abstraction, they echo the work of iconic British sculptors such as Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. The sculptural approximation of the female form also links back to the gender-orientated works that defined Lucas’s early practice, in which assemblages of found objects became stand-ins for the female body.)

Who is the artist who should immortalize Monica Bellucci?

Back in 2009, I wrote a four part article on the Venus of Urbino, trying to answer the question: “Who is the 20th century Venus of Urbino?”. In the concluding fourth part, I nominated Monica Bellucci for the title.

In the past I have written about painting of the human boby and flesh. I consider this article to lay the foundation for the aesthetic principles to be employed here in order to nominate the artist.

Time is of the essence! If I were to start from the origins of painting and sculpture, or even from the renaissance, I would find many candidates: Titian, Michelangelo, Velazquez, Rubens, Rembrandt, Degas, Rodin, and so many others.

But the artist who will immortalize of Monica must be alive today, so I need to limit my set of choices. Thankfully, there are so many, that I had to select five to be included in this article.

Cathy Wilkes, Irish, born 1966

“Cathy Wilkes’s installations of objects, readymades and paintings are formally precise and contemplative. Their essentially diaristic and self-reflective forms are composed using a complex and liberated visual language. Her work, whilst in many ways uncompromisingly introspective, is characterized by direct, almost diagrammatic invocations of daily human experience.” (Source: Tate Gallery, England)

Cathy Wilkes, Selective Memory

In 2008 she was nominated for the Turner Prize, for her solo exhibition at Milton Keynes Gallery, which showed “her personal approach to figurative sculpture”. She uses everyday items such as widescreen TVs and modern pushchairs in her installations. The judges of the competition said: “Through rigorous, highly-charged arrangements of commonplace objects and materials, Wilkes has developed an articulate and eloquent vocabulary that touches on issues of femininity and sexuality.”

Cathy Wilkes, We are pro choice

Ron Mueck, Australian, born 1958

Born in Australia in 1958, he has lived in the U.K. for the last 20 years but didn’t come up through the same channels as the other YBAs. Self-taught, he worked for two decades in children’s television, animatronics, and the movie industry before making his first work of art in 1996.

 

Ron Mueck, Mother and Child

You’re face to … well, something, with one of the most superrealistic sculptures you will ever see, Ron Mueck’s Mother and Child — a perfectly painted, scaled-down rendition of a supine, naked woman who has just given birth. This silicon and fiberglass resin sculpture never gives up its illusion. Mother’s arms are limp at her side, a sheen of sweat glistens on her cheek, her face is flushed and splotchy. There are bags under her eyes, stray hairs stuck in her mouth. She raises her head just enough to peer at the crinkled, crimson-colored baby crouched on her puffy belly, and gives this child — whose umbilical cord still snakes into her vagina — a look of love and incredulity. As one woman said, while peering between the mother’s legs, “It doesn’t get any more real than that.” (Jerry Saltz in artnet.)

 

Ron Mueck, Couple

 

Jeff Koons, American, born 1955

Born in York, Pennsylvania, in 1955, Koons painted copies of the Old Masters and sold them in the furniture store owned by his father, an interior decorator.

Jeff Koons, Pink Panther

 

On the evening of 10 May 2011, Sotheby’s will offer one of the most important works by Jeff Koons ever to have appeared at auction. Pink Panther from 1988 draws on many of the themes that have come to define Koons’ output and stands as one of the outstanding achievements of his illustrious career.

Tobias Meyer, Worldwide Head of Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s, says that “together with ‘Balloon Dog’ and ‘Bunny’, ‘Pink Panther’ is a 20th-century masterpiece and one of the most iconic sculptures of Jeff Koons’s oeuvre”. In a press note, Sotheby’s describes the work as “a masterpiece not only of the artist’s historic canon, but also of the epoch of recent Contemporary Art”.

Pink Panther will appear on the front and back covers of the sale catalogue for the spring Contemporary Art Evening Auction in New York and is estimated to fetch $20/30 million.

Eric Fischl, American, born 1948

I encountered the work of Eric Fischl in the Brandhorst Museum, in Munich. The work that immediately impressed me was the “Japanese Bath”.

 

Eric Fischl, Japanese Bath

 

I then turned to another canvas, that was atmospheric and almost menacing. The Living Room Scene 3 of the Krefeld Project.

 

Eric Fischl, The Krefeld Project, Living Room Scene 3

 

EF: “America has a hard time with the human body and the issues surrounding the body and certainly, mortality is one of those problems.”

IS: “So much of your work has been about sexuality.”

EF: “Yes, an exploration of sexuality. And the sensuality as the experience of paint and material.”

(from an interview to Ilka Sobie, in artnet.)

 

Eric Fischl, The travel of romance I

 

The travel of romance is a set of four paintings.

 

Eric Fischl, The travel of romance II

 


Lucian Freud, English, born 1922

Lucian Freud is the grandson of Sigmund Freud, and is quite possibly the greatest living painter. He was born in Berlin in 1922.

 

Lucian Freud by Lucian Freud

On the occasion of his 2010 exhibition at the Pombidou Center in Paris, Jonathan Jones of the Guardian commented: “The revelation is that, in spite of all the technocratic global homogenisations of our age, the human being remains a vast, irreducible mystery. Freud has said he wants to make his paint as real as flesh itself, so that you see a body before you.”

Lucian Freud, Naked portrait with reflection

One of my favourite paintings of his is the “Naked Portrait with Reflection”. There is silent despair and abandonment which is exacerbated by the nakedness of the woman. And this precisely the mastery of the painter. To take the naked body in all of its mundane existence, and make it a tragic entity that oozes tension, despair, and the inevitability of death. Which in turn, makes the viewer even more moved by the body and more and more. It is a spiral that takes you to the depth of existence, inward, and more inward….

Lucian Freud, Closed Eyes

Feud has been quoted as follows: “The problem with painting a nude… is that it deepens the transaction. You can scrap a painting of someone’s face and it imperils the sitter’s self-esteem less than scrapping a painting of the whole naked body.”

The verdict

Who is the artist who will immoprtalize monica Bellucci? When I started the article, I wanted to leave this question unanswered.

Now that I have reached the conclusion, I would suggest that it is Eric Fischl. By process of elimination I explain:

1. Cathy Wilkes is highly intellectual. She is creating powerful figures and installations, but inside it all, you have to interpret a lot.

2. Ron Mueck is a stylist who is almost perfect, therefore bordering on the artificial.

3. Jeff Koons is so much into deconstructing reality that Monica in his hands would be a caricature, albeit a beautiful one.

4. Lucian Freud is in the final analysis treating the flesh as a fetish. There will be no place in his painting of Monica for these glorious eyes.

On the other hand, Eric Fischl is strongly rooted in the realist tradition represented by Edward Hopper and quite clearly loves women and their bodies. Yes, there may be death lurking about, but what the hell, he will miss no opportunity to enjoy and glorify the woman.   And for this reason I nominate him for Monica’s portrait.

Green Eyes – Ojos Verdes – Πρασινα Ματια

Greek song
Two green eyes
with blue eye lashes
have driven me into madness
my heart you should know
the eyes you have seen
will come to any good
But I cannot even tell them this,
to the eyes with the greenish color
Ελληνικο εντεχνο τραγουδι
Δυο πρασινα ματια
με μπλε βλεφαριδες
με εχουνε κανει τρελο
καρδια μου να ξερεις
τα ματια που ειδες
πως δεν θα σου βγουν
σε καλο
Φοβαμαι ακομα και να τους το πω
κι ας εχουν το χρωμα το πρασινωπο
Scarlett Johansson

Poison, Charles Baudelaire (from the collection “Les Fleurs du mal”)

Wine knows how to adorn the most sordid hovel

With marvelous luxury
And make more than one fabulous portal appear
In the gold of its red mist
Like a sun setting in a cloudy sky.

Opium magnifies that which is limitless,
Lengthens the unlimited,
Makes time deeper, hollows out voluptuousness,
And with dark, gloomy pleasures
Fills the soul beyond its capacity.

All that is not equal to the poison which flows
From your eyes, from your green eyes,
Lakes where my soul trembles and sees its evil side…
My dreams come in multitude
To slake their thirst in those bitter gulfs.

All that is not equal to the awful wonder
Of your biting saliva,
Charged with madness, that plunges my remorseless soul
Into oblivion
And rolls it in a swoon to the shores of death.

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

Angelina Jolie

Nico Gabriel Pentzikis, the Rain

Νίκος Γαβριήλ Πεντζίκης, Η βροχή

Like the wind brnging the water, the ship with the sails is tilting

on one side, and the pas under the smooth keel,

and the multiheaded waves rock the boat

leafing through some mementos

submerged my whole being into nostalgia.

Όπως ο άνεμος που φέρνει νερό, γέρνει το πλοίο με τα ιστία
απ’ τη μια μπάντα, και περνούν κάτω απ’ την εύδρομη τρόπιδα,
και σκαμπανεβάζουν το κύτος τα πολυκέφαλα κύματα
το ξεφύλλισμα κάποιων αναμνηστικών,
έγειρε την ύπαρξή μου ολόκληρη στη νοσταλγία.

As the rainfall is, I want to determine,

when the thick drops hit

the blonde summer earth and transform its essence

and raise the smell.

Όπως είναι η βροχή, θέλω να προσδιορίσω,
όταν οι χοντρές στάλες χτυπούν
το ξανθό θερινό χώμα και μεταλλάσσουν την ουσία του
και σηκώνουν τη μυρωδιά.

Like the summer rainfall, when it creeps on the leaves

of the trees and their round shapes

wave shuddering.

Όπως είναι η θερινή βροχή, όταν συρτά περνά πάνω στα φύλλα
των δέντρων κι’ απ’ ανατρίχιασμα κυματίζει
το στρόγγυλο σχήμα τους.

Because your face that I seek is like the abundant rain,

and your green eyes like the heavey color of the weather.

Locked in my room I hear the tasteless rain knock

on the window of my solitude.

Seetest rain, rich in all places.

Γιατί το πρόσωπό σου που ζητώ είναι όπως η βροχή η άφθονη,
και τα πράσινα μάτια σου όπως το χρώμα του καιρού, το βαρύ.
Κλεισμένος στην κάμαρη την άγευστη βροχή ακούω να χτυπά
το παράθυρο της μοναξιάς μου.
Γλυκύτατη βροχή, πλούσια σ’ όλον τον τόπο.

(Newspaper “New Truth” Thessaloniki, 1938)

(Εφημερίδα «Νέα Αλήθεια» Θεσσαλονίκης, 1938)

http://www.translatum.gr/forum/index.php?topic=6785.0#ixzz1BscjPF45

Kristin Kreuk

Lines written in dejection

W. B.Yeats

WHEN have I last looked on
The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies
Of the dark leopards of the moon?
All the wild witches, those most noble ladies,
For all their broom-sticks and their tears,
Their angry tears, are gone.
The holy centaurs of the hills are vanished;
I have nothing but the embittered sun;
Banished heroic mother moon and vanished,
And now that I have come to fifty years
I must endure the timid sun.

La Dolce Vita – Fellini's Masterpiece

“The film first impinged on the world at large in February 1960 when foreign journalists reported back to their readers, listeners and viewers on the controversial reception in Italy, where it divided audiences, critics and clerics, and led to Fellini being both spat on and cheered at the Milan premiere.” (Source: Philip French’s film review in the Guardian)

“Jesus Christ swings over Rome in a breathtaking opening sequence; a statue suspended from a helicopter where Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) beckons to a gaggle of sunbathing beauties below. He’s a spiritually bankrupt man who pushes girlfriend Emma (Yvonne Furneaux) to the brink of suicide with his incessant philandering. Nonetheless he cannot resist ‘the sweet life’ of sex and partying, seductively embodied by Hollywood movie star Sylvia – a voluptuous Anita Ekberg framed like a goddess as she cavorts in the Trevi Fountain.” (Source: Stella Papamichael’s film review in the BBC)

The Fontana di Trevi scene.

And the unforgettable music of Nino Rota.

“It was I who made Fellini famous, not the other way around”. (Anita Ekberg)

Ekberg is quoted (in a TV interview) as saying “Mrcello was zero when I met him, I made him famous!”.

No matter what the real case is, both Marcello and Anita are beautiful and doomed in this movie.

“La Dolce Vita”  is actually a bittersweet life, with the bitter taste ever present, not letting the sweet enjoy a victory. Marcello never really gets around to the sweet comfort of victory or pleasure. He is always chasing, something elusive, without being able to actually experience something, as the object of experience is continuously fragmented and disjointed.

Fellini has described La Dolce Vita as “a journey through the inauthentic” (in Federico Fellini’s Autobiography, a documentary by Paquito del Bosco available on the Criterion Collection DVD, La Strada). The film displays an almost palpable anxiety over the question of distinguishing the authentic from the inauthentic, the real from the simulated; and it is because of Marcello’s inability to make reliable distinctions between these categories that the film steadily moves towards a sense of chaos and disorder. The pervasive superficiality and artificiality of the characters Marcello encounters suggest a psychology in which identity is always concealed behind a social mask, and masquerade and performance have become the key elements of self. Such a view of human psychology inevitably forces us to confront the irreducible distance between self and other, a distance that is most often represented by Fellini as a breakdown of human communication. …. La Dolce Vita is a dense, complex portrait of modern life; a scathing critique of media culture, of its artificiality and sensationalism, its squandering of social energy in pursuit of the trivial, its insatiable appetite for scandal and the thrill of “the new. And it is equally an analysis of the “modern” self, of the narcissism and vanity that underlie sexual desire and which inhibit any meaningful communication between human beings. La Dolce Vita is about the emotional and spiritual cost of embracing such values. And it is also an expression of Fellini’s own anxieties as an artist, his concern that as a filmmaker he is like Marcello, a chronicler of the trivial and the unimportant. The crisis in Fellini’s conception of himself as an artist and filmmaker would find its fullest fictional treatment in his next solo film, 8 1/2. (Source:  Fellini’s Roman Circus)

At the end, he encounters again the beautiful young girl from a little cafe he met earlier.  A profile like an angel.  She beckons to him, but he can’t hear her across the waves.  He goes back to his degenerate orgiasts who are leaving the beach where they were gawking at an enormous “sea monster” the fishermen brought in.  Might there be a shred of hope left for him? (Source: Journey to perplexity)

Marcello cannot hear what the angel figure across the beach of Fregena is telling him He knows very well that he is not going to stay there, that he is going to go. He will walk away from his only chance to redeem himself. Redemption appeared before him and he turns it away. Marcello actually watches his redemption ticket being burned.

La Dolce Vita is a big puzzle with a simple end, that there is an end, sooner or later, and there are only limited choices that appear in front of us.  The choices we make and the end are intertwined.

We talk a lot about the end. The personal end, as I cannot foretell or describe the end of the world or the universe, should there ever be such an event. What is the personal end? I do not know, I have not experienced it yet. But I have a picture of it in my mind, it is the circus characters’ band walking on the beach at sunset, when the daylight gives its place to the darkness of the night. (the photo is from Fellini’s 8 1/2).

La Mezquita in Cordoba – Part I

I am not familiar with Islamic art. But my recent visit to the Great Mosque of Cordoba in Spain was an ecstatic experience. This is the first part of an article on the Mezquita of Cordoba.

Detail from the Door of the Dean

I start with some history, borrowed from the vast resources of the Metropolian Museum of Art in New York, then continue with a short tour of the outside, and conclude the first part with the entrance in the Mezquita and the first impressions and feelings.

“On July 19, 711, an army of Arabs and Berbers unified under the aegis of the Islamic Umayyad caliphate landed on the Iberian Peninsula. Over the next seven years, through diplomacy and warfare, they brought the entire peninsula except for Galicia and Asturias in the far north under Islamic control; however, frontiers with the Christian north were constantly in flux. The new Islamic territories, referred to as al-Andalus by Muslims, were administered by a provincial government established in the name of the Umayyad caliphate in Damascus and centered in Córdoba. Of works of art and other material culture only coins and scant ceramic fragments remain from this early period of the Umayyad governors (711–56).

When the Umayyad caliphate of Damascus was overthrown by the Abbasids in 750, the last surviving member of the Umayyad dynasty fled to Spain, establishing himself as Emir Abd al-Rahman I and thus initiating the Umayyad emirate (756–929). Abd al-Rahman I (r. 756–88) made Córdoba his capital and unified al-Andalus under his rule with a firm hand, while establishing diplomatic ties with the northern Christian kingdoms, North Africa, and the Byzantine empire and maintaining cultural contact with the Abbasids in Baghdad. The initial construction of the Great Mosque of Córdoba under his patronage was the crowning achievement of this formative period of Hispano-Islamic art and architecture.”

(Source: The Art of the Umayyad Period in Spain (711–1031) | Thematic Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art).

Aerial view of the Mezquita in Cordoba (source: Wikipedia)

The Great Mosque of Cordoba was built over a period of three centuries, from the 8th to the 11th. It is a rectangle with a orange tree court with a basin adjacent to it. This court is the oldest Moorish garden in Spain (marked as 7 in the plan that follows).

The concept was to imitate if not exceed the Great Mosque of Damascus.

At the edge of the tree line at the bottom of the photo is the bank of the famous river, Guadalquivir. The plan of the Mezquita that follows is “turned upside down” compared to the photo. The river is at the top. The resolution of the plan is high so that you can download it and view it in full resolution for the details.

The Minaret, enveloped by a Baroque Tower in 17c
Door of Forgiveness (1 in the plan)
Puerta San Esteban (Door of Saint Stephen) - Marked 3 on the plan
Puerta

Puerta San Miguel (Door of Saint Michael’s) – Marked 4 on the Plan.

Door of the Psalms, viewed from the Orange Tree Court – Marked 6 on the Plan.

Carved wooden beams in the cloisters – detail (Marked 8 on the plan)

When the Moors first arrived in Cordoba, they were content to share the Visigothic Church of Saint Vincent with the Christians. When this became insufficient, AdbAl-Rahman purchased their part and started building  the Mosque (marked 9 on the plan) with 11 aisles, opening onto the Orange Tree Court. The architectural innovation in the mosque was the superimposition of two tiers of arches to give added height and spaciousness. They used marble pillars and Roman stone from St Vicent’s Church and other buildings in the area.

Once you are inside (you enter in the area marked 8 on the plan) you get overwhelmed by the “forest of pillars” as one traveler put it, and the  completely new feeling of space. It is as if space is distorted, but yet it returns to its normal state, If there is one thing that I will never forget from my visit there is this “feeling” of space. The last time I felt this was when I visited the Chillida museum in the Basque country. The photos cannot convey this feeling, but you get an idea.

This is one of the corridors that take you from the entrance to the Mihrab (marked 13 on the plan), which you can barely see at the end. The two pillars at the beginning of this corridor are supporting the Christian Cathedral that is almost embedded in the Great Mosque. In the photo below you see the parallel corridor on the left as we face the Mihrab.

As I walk down this corridor with direction towards the Mihrab, I get to see some of the marvelous arches within arches of the Great Mosque.

With these first impressions of the inside area, I conclude Part I of my visit to the Mezquita of Cordoba.

In Part II I will cover the Christian Cathedral and the area of the Mahrib.

Its almost summertime and the living gets easier – Εσκασε μυτη το καλοκαιρακι και η ζωη γινεται ευκολωτερη

Late May in Greece and the continuum of space and time is broken.

You go to the beach and although the water is still rather cold, there are many ways to get warm inside your heart.

You then go for a stroll in the area and the smell of cooking foods arrest your senses.

In my case, I got so excited about all this that when my sister called me announcing that she had a lobster from Cyclades, I run to her house in almost zero time. (the more you want something, the more time is distorted – and with the distortion of time comes the degradation of senses and feelings).

Armirikia

The wonderful “armirikia”, the greens growing near the sea, are the natural choice of a warm salad to start your meal. All you need is olive oil, lemon juice and a bit of sea salt.

Maridakia

The next dish is the wonderful “maridakia”, small fish that is fried without any gutting or descaling. The absolute taste of the sea, must be eaten whole and enjoyed with ouzo. My sister fried them to perfection, and added to the dish a couple of seaweeds that were the highlight! I want to have fried seaweed now!

Lobster salad

The lobster came from the Cyclades, the islands complex in the center of the Aegean. I prepared the salad with the meat from the claws.

I started breaking the claws and pulling the meat out and the aromas of the sea made me forget that I wanted to take a picture!

In any case, I added lemon juice, olive oil, a spoonful of home made mayonnaise and parsley. the result was unforgettable!

I cannot ever describe the aromas and the texture of the claw meat. I surrender and declare my impotence.

Nature has defeated me in the most comprehensive way!

CREDITS

1. Thanks to Kelly and Natasha for bringing the freshness of  summer to the post.

2. Brava to my sister for sharing the delicacies with me.